


The House of Winter

by Hotpie



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Contemplation of Suicide, F/M, Fuck Or Die, Horror, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Episode: s08e03 The Long Night, Pregnancy, Romance, Slow Burn, fixit, kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-03-02 18:43:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18816784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hotpie/pseuds/Hotpie
Summary: Jon had told her the things that Craster did to appease the Others. The boys they took. The recruits for their army, ripped from their mothers' arms.As far as Sansa knows, she and the Hound are the only two people left in the world.  And they’re being watched.There’s only one way to keep the wights from the door…





	1. Winter Fell

**Author's Note:**

> Well, that was a dumpster fire.
> 
> This is a FixIt!fic set in the North if the Battle of Winterfell had gone quite differently, diverging from canon about half-way through Episode 3.
> 
> You know things are bad when you find yourself wishing that the Night King had won...

Night was falling.

It was hard to tell anymore, the exact line between a grey, ashen daylight and the cold, bruised twilight. Sansa was spending too much wood on the fire, but she couldn’t get warm. Wisps of icy fog slipped through the window slats and around the woolen curtains. Her numb fingers made untidy work of repairing her gown. Her breath misted on her lips. Above her, mice scurried in the thatch, and she licked her lips, hungry.

At her side, sitting on the rickety little table, was the dragonglass dagger, gleaming coolly, bleakly in the firelight.

She cut the thread with her teeth, then stopped, froze.

Footsteps.

She’d learned his steps well these past weeks--had learned to wait up, listening hard, for the heavy plod of his big feet, the fresh crack of the crust on the snow. They were uneven, like a heartbeat, still limping from a long-healed wound he wouldn’t explain. Uneven, but clear, distinct.

They didn’t drag.

Her needle hung in the air. Her breath stayed suspended in a stagnant cloud. She pursed her lips, stopped her lungs. Every hair lifted, every nerve to attention.

Outside, through the drapings, she heard it:

_Sss…sheh._

_Sss…sheh._

_Sss…sheh._

She’d never seen them until the crypts. She’d seen the dead, of course…her own Lord Father, head mounted on the bastard king’s wall. Her septa. Her own innocence, flayed and bared to the crows.

It wasn’t until after the crypts that she started dreaming of her father’s head: his eyes snapping open, an icy, biting blue.

Not until the crypts that she'd started dreaming the tearing of flesh.

The gushing of blood.

The agony of tortured screams and hungry rasps of the damned.

There. Still. The hiss of feet over fresh snow.

Something dragging.

Something dead.

_Sss…shhhh._

_Sss…shhhh._

Her heart beat so hard in her chest she could almost taste it. She almost wished it would stop. She was sure they could hear it. Smell her fear on the air.

“You know what to do, girl,” Sandor had said to her when he left with his ax, small bow strung over his massive shoulders—even larger for the furs. His hard eyes fell upon the dagger.

“Stick them with the pointy end,” she said, and they both looked sadly at each other, and said nothing more before he disappeared into the falling snow.

Her needle glinted dully in the firelight: a useless, pointed silver. She missed Arya suddenly, keenly. She imagined her sister at her side--her voice, always steady: _I trust you. You know what to do_.

She placed the needle down in silence. She placed her hand upon the butt of the dagger, slender fingers curling around the stone.

_Sss…shhhh._

_Sss…shhhh._

She closed her eyes briefly, hot tears pricking then threatening to freeze on her lashes. Everything was growing colder. Her lungs hurt. Her fingers were frozen where they clutched the warm knife. She thought suddenly—foolishly—of the things she dwelled on when she was a girl: those small comforts in the night when the monsters from Old Nan’s stories barged slobbering into her dreams:

The warmth of the walls.

The far-off murmur of familiar voices.

The smell of home.

The hard little shape of her doll in the dark.

She’d loved that doll. It was a porcelain babe, with fair hair and green eyes, and had the most tender of expressions painted on its face. It had been a gift from Robb when she was turned eight. She’d left it at Winterfell when she’d gone with her father to King’s Landing, dismissing it as babyish, and had only found it among the old trunks the weeks before Jon (dead) returned with his dragon queen (dead). It was still at Winterfell now, she supposed—or maybe giving some small comfort to a dead and rotting child.

There was no warmth here, even with the fire. No far-off murmurs of her mother and father. No smell of home. No dolls.

Just Sansa. Her dagger and her needle and her senses, and the desperate, futile hope that the Hound would return and save her. She could save herself, she’d done it before. But how many were out there? How many had come for her?

_Sss…shhhh._

_Sss…shhhh._

Closer, closer. The bells on twine at the perimeter fence jangled, once, then crashed and fell silent. Sansa’s breath came in short, rapid bursts. It clung to her face, stinging. Her knuckles cracked, her grip tightening. She turned to the door, which she’d left unlatched, because stone and metal and wood were no use against the Others.

Then.

Silence.

Breathing.

Just breathing. So short it left her lightheaded, so cold it hurt her lungs. She licked her lips. The skin stung.

The door swung opened.

Her heart sank.

If the man was living he might have spoken. A threat, even… _something._ Something that betrayed a brain behind the blue and empty eyes. _At least he won’t rape me_ , Sansa thought bitterly, stretching herself to full height, every bone in her body clicking, angry. _And at least he’s not the Hound_.

She didn’t dwell on that thought long. The day that Sandor Clegane showed up at her door with blue eyes, it was over. The blade would find home in a different target, up beneath her ribs. To the heart, the way he’d taught her. The way he’d taught her to do it to him.

A small mercy, then, that it wasn't him, but this _thing_ wasn’t alone. It was a wildling, the patterns of its mottled furs dancing, jumping in the meager firelight. Still, she could see the wights behind it. The uneven, listing figures that stood as though in formation, filling every inch of space where there should only be endless winter.

She lifted the dagger, pointy end first.

A jerk. A sudden movement. Death, coming suddenly and swiftly, before she had a chance to turn the knife on herself.

But.

No.

It was only a _thunk_.

And something rolled to a stop at her feet.

Sansa scrambled backwards, into her chair. _It’s a head, it’s a head, it’s a head_ , she thought. _It’s his it’s his it’s his_.

The wights did not move forward, only hung in the doorway, as though at leisure, their limbs loose, waiting for their puppetmaster to pull a string.

‘No,’ Sansa whispered. ‘Please no.’

She bit her tongue between her teeth. Rolled the head with the sole of her boot:

White cheeks.

Blond hair.

Porcelain eyes.

Her _doll_.

She looked up at the dead, not understanding, not seeing. But they were already moving away, back into the night.

_Sss…shhhh._

_Sss…shhhh._

The steps receded. The warmth of the fire reached forward with fingers so firm her skin felt like it might sizzle and burn.

The babe’s head rocked steadily back and forth, back and forth, them came to a stop, staring up at Sansa with empty, waiting eyes.


	2. The Offer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa thinks she's figured it out.

 

Sandor Clegane couldn’t wait to get home.

The day had been a bitch. Hours spent hunting, back screaming, leg throbbing, and he’d caught one shit rabbit, so skinny it’d hardly feed a rat. Between that and a handful of berries he’d gleaned from a shrub, that was their meal for the night. Repeat tomorrow, and the next day, for the rest of their short fucking lives.

And seven hells, was it cold. He’d stand in the fucking fire if that was what it took to make him feel his fingers again.

And yes, begrudgingly, it wasn’t just the warmth he was looking forward to. He wasn’t sure when the one-room cottage with the sparse thatched roof, set away by itself from town or hamlet, became home to him, but it was all he fucking had, wasn’t it? The only place that wasn’t dead. The only place that wasn’t burning.

They’d left Winterfell when it was burning. He’d thought of going back this morning—a day’s walk, at least—thinking of that grain they’d stored away, the meat they’d hung and butchered. But it would be burned now, and if not burned, then full of _them_.

So now it was just him and Sansa, king and queen of the fucking ashes.

 _Still_ , he admitted to himself, the hateful way he did whenever he had hope, _at least she’s there_.

The moment she wasn’t, he’d have no reason to stick around, either.

The walk was bitter, but his footsteps were quick; he’d stopped being careful the twentieth, thirtieth time he’d gone out hunting without seeing one person, living or dead. He hated the sound his feet made in the snow—lonely, echoing, maybe the only man’s footsteps for hundreds of miles. He wanted inside. He wanted to hear her voice.

The night was red, pregnant with yet more snow. More fucking snow, but at least it was easy to see. Everything was pinkish, like the land was bleeding, releasing any hope that spring would ever come. Trees reached out with dead, bony fingers. Hills jutted up around him like craggy teeth of a giant’s mouth, ready to swallow.

 _Almost there_.

There. Smoke from the chimney, always a good sign. Cracks of light in the windows. She was there. Waiting for his scraps, whatever he had to offer her.

Sandor stopped outside the perimeter fence, where she’d strung bells on twine to warn of intruders. He would tug it thrice to let her know it was him—he’d liked that, the song it made, like there was music in the world. He reached for it, fumbling for it in the red light of the night, but his hand found nothing. It wasn’t there.

‘Sansa?’

He kicked at the snow, hit something metallic—the bells, buried beneath fresh powder, the twine snapped and frayed.

It wasn't just the bells. There was more. More he’d missed. Dents in the snow—the impressions of footsteps, buried but still there.

A lot of footsteps.

‘Fuck.’

He began to run. His leg throbbed, his lungs burned, but he ran for the cottage, axe drawn. The door was shut, its hinges frosted, its threshold stamped down by footsteps until it was a sheet of ice. He slipped, steadied himself, and stopped before he laid a hand on the knob.

Instead, he took a step back. Raised the axe.

‘Sansa, are you in there?’ His voice was ragged, breaking. The axe shook in his hands. ‘Please.’

He waited, bile on his tongue. Three heartbeats. Four.

The door creaked open.

A blue eye appeared.

His arms dropped an inch.

‘They’ve come,’ she said.

Sandor let out a strangled sob, and his axe clattered to the ground.

*

They sat by the fire for a while, drinking from clay cups of hot water and watching the meagre rabbit as it roasted on the spit.

The doll’s head sat on the table between them with Sansa’s sewing, empty eyes staring up into the rafters.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said slowly, clearly. She was as pretty as a doll herself with her gleaming red hair and her pretty feet propped up on the stool by the fire, even half-buried in furs. ‘I keep going over it again and again in my head, thinking I imagined it, but the footsteps are still there. _That_ is still here.’

‘You really think it’s yours,’ Sandor said, sipping his water and wishing it was wine.

‘I know it’s mine,’ she said. Her voice had grown so deep, so confident since she was a girl—since she was his little fragile bird in King’s Landing. She wasn’t just a woman, now. She should have been a queen. He wondered how differently things would have turned out if Sansa had become ruler in the north and not her idiot half-brother. Jon Snow had been too stupid to keep himself and the rest of the Northmen out of the Night King’s ranks, and had gifted the frozen bastard three undead dragons besides. He should have known as soon as he volunteered to go beyond the Wall with that boy. They were all fucking doomed.

‘Why would they carry it all this way?’

She scoffed. ‘Perhaps it’s a gift for my name day.’ She frowned and shifted in her furs. She had the dagger in her lap. Sandor wondered if she’d released it since the undead left the threshold. ‘Did Jon ever tell you about Craster?’

Sandor suppressed the urge to snap back at her, and simply settled on, ‘No.’

‘He was a Wildling. He married all his daughters.’

‘Sick fucker.’

‘That wasn’t the worst.’

‘Do I want to know?’

‘Do you know what they did with the boys?’

‘I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.’

‘He gave them to the White Walkers. Bundled them up and placed them in the snow.’

‘What’d they do with them?’

‘I don’t know. All I know is that Craster’s Keep was never attacked once by wights.’

Her eyes met his. Hers were wide open, blue as ice.

‘I always wondered how Craster knew what they wanted. The arrangement seemed odd. How do you reason with magic like that? How do you speak without them killing you?’

‘Maybe they don’t speak,’ Sandor said, his eyes falling to the doll’s head and its chipped porcelain face, its blank innocence. There was blood in its hair, he realized, and a smear of soot at its chin.

Sansa’s blue gaze turned back to the fire. ‘There’s only one reason they’d let me live,’ she said, her voice dropping to a feather-light whisper. She ran her fingers across the edge of the dragonglass blade, so hard Sandor expected blood. ‘They want sons.’

Sandor stayed silent, know what he'd heard but unsure what she was saying. They both jumped as rabbit fat dripped into the fire and sizzled.

‘I’d always wanted to marry a king and have his babies,’ Sansa said. If she were anyone else, she would have given a bitter laugh, but Sansa was never one to laugh at her misfortunes. She was careful, considerate as she lifted the blade before her eyes. 'I never thought it would happen like this.'

It still wasn't catching, his thoughts not coming together. They were still separate piece with frayed edges, refusing to be joined at the seams.

Still, he understood her eyes. He knew what she was thinking. He saw the fear there.

Sandor’s words came out thick, stumbling on his own tongue. His eyes were burning. ‘Do you want me to do it?’

She turned toward him. Her eyes were wide, her face pale.

She pursed her lips. Tipped the knife toward him.

And placed it on the table.

‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘But thank you for offering.’

He didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing, though the knot in his stomach eased in relief. He sipped his water, not even wishing for wine anymore, but preferring something quite a bit stronger.

Sansa's eyes were still on him. He could feel the weight of them, so heavy he could barely lift his head. Instead, he stared into the fire, his heart racing, wondering if the fucking Lord of Light would show him what would come next, or if that god had abandoned them, too.

‘What do you want, little bird?’ he asked at last, when the silence had become too thick.

‘Nothing,’ she said quickly.

Then, just as quickly, as though she was trying to be brave, she spoke again:

‘Sandor,' she chirped, high and uncertain--half girl again, half bird. 'Would you please take off your clothes?’


	3. A Bargain

Chapter Three

A Bargain

 

Sansa had dreamt of the Hound.

She had always wondered if she’d ever have the opportunity to tell him how frequently he had shared her marriage bed in her dreams. That was before Ramsay, of course—when her dreams were not yet blissful, sexless places full of screaming and starving hounds. She did not think of Tyrion, her first husband. She did not even think of the Night of the Flowers—who, looking back, she was not sure would be able to satisfy or protect her. Inevitably, and inexplicably, her thoughts circled round and round to Sandor. His burnt lips on her neck. His fingers on her breast.

She supposed it made some sort of sense, in a tidy way that life so infrequently did. He had been there when she first bled—when she proved herself ready for childbearing. And now she was here at his side by the fire, asking him to help her bear that chi—that thing she’d have to give up to the White Walkers. To their new King.

"You’re ill, little bird," Sandor told her. Beneath the beard, his face was pink. She wondered if he might be blushing.

"I’m practical, Sandor." 

"Don’t call me that," he said.

"It’s your name," she said. "What would you rather me call you?" 

"Bastard," he said. "Sick fucker. Hound." 

"I prefer your name."

"I’m not going to fuck you, little bird." 

She jumped, shocked by his forthrightness. Her first instinct was to react like a spoiled child—to stamp her foot, shout at him, and demand that she had her way. The bloody doll’s head was still there on the table between them, a stark reminder of what had been asked of them. He was looking at it, too. He couldn’t take his eyes off of it.

"I don’t know about you," Sansa said. "But I’d rather live." 

‘Would you, now?’

Wind whistled through the slats at the window. She hugged her furs to her shoulders, chilled to the bone, wishing he could at least make her warmer.

"So would you," she said. "Otherwise you wouldn’t be here." 

Sandor sucked his teeth, finally meeting her with a gaze that made her stomach flop over in her belly.

"Maybe I’m not here for me," he said.

"Then _help_ me." 

He gritted his teeth, his scars puckering, and Sansa frowned, thinking back to their weeks together, to the time before.  She had wounded him with her courtesy, she knew, when she first welcomed him to Winterfell. She had said nothing of their time together in King’s Landing. She had not thanked him for helping her--what she now realized was many more times than she’d ever know. Instead, she had played the gracious Lady. She had offered him a room, a bed, and wine, and thanked him for coming to fight for the living, then moved on to the other guests.

She hadn’t seen him again until the night that Winterfell burned.

"Say I bed you," he said, picking up the head and turning its painted eyes to face him. It looked tiny, delicate in his massive hand, tucked between his thick fingers.  "Say I put a babe in you. What then? Give the child over, and satisfy them for a time? Or would they want the next, and the next?" 

Sansa felt outside herself. Floating minutely above her own body, listening to the detached, deep timber of her voice."If that’s what it takes." 

"How many times can you stand it, Sansa?" he asked her, tossing the head aside, where it might a satisfying _thunk_ on the dirt floor and rolled beneath a bed. "How many times can you stand _me_?"

Sansa began to answer, but he carried on, his voice raspy, as though eaten away by smoke.

"I remember you as a girl. A sweet little bird with a head full of knights and princes and babes. Well, there aren’t any more princes. There aren’t any more knights." 

"I’m not a girl, anymore."

"No," he said, thoughtfully. "You’re not." 

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. When a moment ago she had felt detached, without herself, she was now uncomfortably aware of her own body, her own strange reaction to his words. Relief, yes, but something else, too. Frustration. Anger. Despair.

_Want._

_I dreamed about you_ , she wanted to tell him. _At the Eyrie. I dreamed about you in my bed_.

But she knew he would not believe her. To him, she was just a scared little bird whose wings had been clipped. Always forced to sing to whoever rattled the cage.

"Promise me you’ll think about it," she said.

"Aye," he said. The fire crackled, hissed. Outside, the wind stilled, a brief respite from winter. "We have a lot of time for thinking, don’t we, little bird? All the fucking time in the world."


End file.
